Sep 11, 2003 - Orchard Gardens Principal Nanzetta Merriam marched across the concrete playground toward a crowd of students awaiting directions on their first day of school last week.

“These young ladies need to go to the auditorium,” Merriam told a teacher standing nearby. It was one of countless directives the new principal would give that day.

Merriam, who served as a principal in Lowell, Newton and Framingham before coming to Boston, has a communal vision for the brand-new K-8 school at Albany St. and Melnea Cass Blvd. in Roxbury.

His vision for the school, one of three new Boston public schools opening this year, centers around interactions between community members and students.

“We want to make sure children see the community as valuable,” says Merriam.

The curriculum emphasizes community service, with students volunteering at venues ranging from nearby radio stations to retirement homes. Field trips to Dudley Square and other nearby historic areas will impart a sense of community history to the youngsters.

Parents will meet with teachers soon after the start of classes to tell them about their children and what they want their children to gain from being in school. Staff will hold curriculum nights to tell parents what their children must accomplish.

To break the ice in classrooms where most students will not know each other, teachers plan to play games and read stories about community and friendship.

Staff members themselves spent over a week getting to know each other before opening day.

“I think we are all nervous but very optimistic,” said computer teacher Heather Campanella.

The vast majority of the Orchard Gardens students are black or Latino. Only two percent are white.

The new school opened along with the New Boston Pilot Middle School on Columbia Road near the border between Roxbury and Dorchester and the Mildred Avenue School in Mattapan last week. The openings marked the first major surge of school construction in Boston in decades.

“These schools were built because of where kids are in the system,” said Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who pushed for state funding for the new buildings.

Thousands of public school children live in the neighborhoods surrounding Orchard Gardens, prompting the school department to allow the school to enroll 75 percent of its students from within walking distance, as compared to 50 percent for every other Boston public school. Walking distance is defined as one mile for elementary students and one and a half miles for middle school students.

Menino and other city administrators realized years ago that Boston would soon have an unusually large number of middle school students, and so they applied for state funding under a bill to boost school construction.

“We projected the increase in middle schoolers four or five years ago,” said Superintendent Thomas Payzant, who visited Orchard Gardens along with Menino for the school’s opening last week. “That’s why we built two middle schools and one K-8.”

The city also closed five schools at the end of last school year.

Orchard Gardens boasts a gym, music room, dance studio, computer and science labs, auditorium, tennis and basketball courts and library with 170,000 books.

Orchard Gardens will include over 100 special education students in its student body of 750.

The K-8 school will host one of the new English immersion classes, mandated by state ballot referendum for students not fluent in English. The school department began training teachers last year to lead the immersion courses after bilingual education was abolished by the referendum.